Captain in Her Majesty’s 62nd Regiment
Who died of Asiatic Cholera
in Scinde
on the 7th of July, 1846,
Aged 29 years.
The tomb is no record of high lineage;
His may be traced by his name;
His race was one of soldiers.
Among soldiers he lived; among them he died;
A soldier falling, where numbers fell with him,
In a barbarous land.
Yet there was none died more generous,
More daring, more gifted, or more religious.
On his early grave
Fell the tears of stern and hardy men,
As his had fallen on the graves of others.
Surely one hears the trumpet on the dusty field of Meeanee, and the word
of command of the stern old general. The inscription can be by none other
but Sir Charles Napier. There is not much in verse that rings like these
few lines of prose.
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Chichester.
[Illustration: FROM NORTH-EAST.]
Chichester cathedral, though one of the smallest, is to the student
of mediæval architecture one of the most interesting and important of
our Cathedrals. At Salisbury one or two styles of architectures are
represented; at Canterbury two or three; at Chichester every single
style is to be seen without a break from the eleventh to the sixteenth
century. It is an epitome of English architectural history for 500 years.
Early Norman, late Norman, late Transitional, early Lancet, late Lancet,
early Geometrical, late Geometrical, Curvilinear, Perpendicular and
Tudor work all appear in the structure side by side. We have many other
heterogeneous and composite cathedrals, but nowhere, except perhaps at
Hereford, can the whole sequence of the mediæval styles be read so well
as at Chichester.
The last kingdom, says Canon Bright, that remained outside the Church,
was that of the South Saxons, hemmed in by a thick line of well-nigh
impenetrable forest, and so barbarous as to be at once ignorant of one
of the simplest arts, and furious against the incoming of foreigners. It
was reserved for the great Wilfrid, of Hexham, Ripon and York, in one of
his exiles (611)—caused originally by the high-handed partition of his
overlarge diocese of York—to do what no one as yet had done for these
poor rude heathen—what some Irish monks had tried to do and had failed.
They were desperate with famine; he taught them to fish in the sea; for
he was as ready in homely crafts of this kind as in adorning churches or
educating young nobles; and as Bede says, “by this kind act he turned
their hearts to love him; and they began the more willingly to hope for
heavenly blessings under his preaching, when by his assistance they had
received earthly good.”
The first seat of the diocese was on the coast at Selsea; it was
transferred to Chichester by Stigand in 1082, when other Norman prelates
removed to fortified towns such as Lincoln, Exeter, and Norwich. In the
south aisle of the choir are two Saxon slabs representing the meeting
of Christ with Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus. The figures
are the tall, emaciated, but dignified figures of archaic Byzantine art;
their stature carefully proportionate to their importance; the slabs
may well have come from Selsea. Stigand was followed by Gosfried, who
for some unknown sin sought and obtained absolution from the Pope. The
original document in lead may be seen in the library. “We, representing
St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles, to whom God gave the power of
binding and loosing, absolve thee, Bishop Godfrey, so far as thy
accusation requests and the right of remission belongs to us. God the
Redeemer be thy salvation and graciously forgive thee all thy sins. Amen.
On the seventh of the Calends of April, on the festival of St. Firmin,
bishop and martyr, died Godfrey, bishop of Chichester; it was then the
fifth day of the moon.”
I. NORMAN.—Godfrey was succeeded in 1091 by Ralph, whose stone coffin,
marked “Radulphus” may be seen in the Lady chapel. Godfrey built the
present Norman cathedral, or at any rate enough of it to allow a
consecration in 1108. Before his death in 1123, or soon after, the whole
cathedral must have been complete except the west front, where only the
two lower stories of the south-west tower are Norman. The voluted capital
of eleventh-century Norman work—an attempt at Ionic—which appears also
on the east side of Ely transept—occurs in the triforium of the choir.
The work in the four eastern bays of the nave is a little later; the
four western bays, in which the triforium is treated differently, were
possibly not built till after the fire in 1114. The Norman Church had the
same ground-plan as that of Norwich, commenced _c._ 1096, and Gloucester,
commenced _c._ 1089. It had an aisled nave, aisleless transept with
eastern apses, aisled choir, apse and ambulatory, and a chevet of
three radiating chapels, of which the side chapels were semicircular,
the central or eastern chapel oblong, as at Canterbury and Rochester.
Externally, on the south wall of the choir, in the second bay from the
east, may be seen traces of the curve of the wall of the ancient apse,
and also a triforium window which originally was in the centre of one of
the narrowed bays of the apse, but has now ceased to be central. In the
chamber above the library the curve of the wall of the apse of the north
transept is well seen. The piers, as in most eleventh-century work, are
monstrously and unnecessarily heavy, and the arches constricted. It is
rather a monotonous interior, with the same design from choir to west
end. It is a pity that they did not give us a different and improved
design in the nave, as was done at Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Matters
have been made worse by the removal of a superb Perpendicular stone
rood-screen, crowned, as at Exeter, by a Renaissance organ. The removal
of this has impaired the general effect of the interior, much lessening
the apparent length of the cathedral. As usual, only the aisles and apses
of the Norman cathedral were vaulted; the aisles here, as at Southwell,
are vaulted in oblong compartments. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and
served by secular Canons, of whom in 1520 there were thirty-one. In the
triforium of the choir were semicircular transverse arches, precisely as
in the choir of Durham.
[Illustration: PRESBYTERY.]
II. LATE TRANSITIONAL AND EARLY LANCET, from the fire of 1186 to the
consecration of 1199, when the cathedral was re-dedicated to the Holy
Trinity. About 1180 some work was going on in the western part of the
Lady chapel, but in a great fire in 1186 the roofs and fittings of the
whole cathedral were burnt, and the clerestories were no doubt damaged by
falling timbers. The destruction, however, was by no means so great as at
Canterbury in the fire of 1182, and no such drastic process of rebuilding
was necessary. Bishop Siegfried confined himself to four objects: (1) To
fireproof the cathedral by covering it with a stone vault, provided with
the necessary buttresses and flying-buttresses. And as the clerestory
which had to support the vault was much damaged, its inner arcade had
to be rebuilt. (2) To replace the apse and ambulatory and chevet by a
rectangular retro-choir with square eastern chapels. (3) To replace the
transeptal apses by similar chapels. (4) To get rid of some of the rough
and heavy appearance of the ground-story of the whole church. He did not
touch the triforium.
Siegfried probably commenced with the choir, which was most wanted.
The masonry of the ground-story had probably been calcined by the
roof-timbers blazing on the floor; the inner face of this was cased with
good Caen stone. As at Canterbury, great use was made of Purbeck marble,
in which were built angle-shafts and capitals to the piers, hood-moulds
for the pier-arches, string-courses below and above the triforium, and
arcading to the clerestory. In front of each pier a triple vaulting-shaft
was run up, with a marble capital, supporting the new quadripartite
vault. Externally, the clerestory wall was supported by flying-buttresses
of heavy archaic type, similar to those of the choirs of Canterbury and
Boxgrove. Later on, the same treatment was extended by Siegfried and his
successors to the nave and transepts.
His next step was to remove the Norman apse and to build an aisled
retro-choir of two bays. This is the architectural gem of the cathedral.
The idea of it probably came from Hereford, where the retro-choir is
a few years earlier. At Hereford, however, the retro-choir projects
picturesquely, and forms an eastern transept. The central piers of the
Chichester retro-choir are remarkably beautiful. They consist of a
central column surrounded by four shafts very widely detached; column
and shafts are of Purbeck marble. The capitals are Corinthianesque;
their height is proportioned to the diameters of the column and
shafts. This beautiful capital was reproduced a few years later by St.
Hugh at Lincoln, and the pier at Boxgrove. The triforium is of quite
exceptional beauty, as indeed is the whole design. Semicircular arches
occur in the pier-arcade and triforium, and some of the abaci are
square; otherwise the design is pure Gothic. Here, as at Abbey Dore, St.
Thomas’, Portsmouth, Boxgrove, and Wells, we see the transition from
the Transition to the “pure and undefiled Gothic” of St. Hugh’s choir
at Lincoln. In these beautiful churches the ancient Romanesque style
breathed its last.
The aisles of the new retro-choir were continued on either side of the
first bay of the Norman Lady chapel, whose three bays had probably
been remodelled before the fire in Transitional fashion. The capitals
of the Lady chapel are of exceptional interest and importance, as
showing experimental foliation which had not yet settled down into the
conventional leafage of early Gothic. The apse also of the south transept
was replaced by a square chapel; and that of the north transept by a
double chapel, now used as a library, in the vaulting of which the Norman
zigzag occurs.
III. A little later in the LANCET period was built (1199-1245) the
lovely south porch, with small, exquisite mouldings, and charming
foliated capitals and corbels. The difference between early Transitional,
late Transitional, and Lancet foliation may be well seen by examining
successively the capitals of the Lady chapel, the triforium of the
retro-choir, and the south porch. The north porch is almost equally
fine. The vaulting-ribs, square in section, show that the two porches
both belong to the very first years of the thirteenth century. Rather
later, the sacristy was built on to the south porch, with a massive vault
supported by foliated corbels.
IV. In the EARLY GEOMETRICAL period (1245-1280) building still went on
unremittently. The south-west tower was raised to its present height; the
low Norman central tower was replaced by a higher one: it is curious that
this tower is oblong on plan; the transept, contrary to custom, being
wider than nave or choir. A pretty circular window, with cusped circles
and tooth ornament, was inserted in the eastern gable of the retro-choir,
and a fine Galilee porch was added to the west front, as at Ely.
But the great change that was destined to alter the whole character of
the nave was the addition of chapels. In our parish churches it is common
enough to find that pious and wealthy parishioners have been allowed
to tack family chapels on to the aisles or nave. In Dorchester Priory
Church there is a south aisle running the whole length of the church,
made up of nothing but a series of chantry-chapels. This was common
enough, too, in the French cathedrals—_e.g._, Paris and Amiens. But the
naves of the English cathedrals were not as a rule tampered with in this
way. At Chichester, however, there were built, one after another, four
sets of chapels—of St. George and St. Clement on the south of the south
aisle, and of St. Thomas, St. Anne, and St. Edmund on the north of the
north aisle. The windows should be studied in the above order; they form
quite an excellent object-lesson of the evolution of bar-tracery from
plate-tracery, itself a derivative from such designs as that of the east
window of the south transept chapel. When the chapels were completed, the
Norman aisle-walls were pierced, and arches were inserted where Norman
windows had been; and the Lancet buttresses, which had been added when
the nave-vault was erected, now found themselves inside the church,
buttressing piers instead of walls. The new windows on the south side
were built so high that the vaulting of the chapels had to be tilted up
to allow room for their heads; externally they were originally crowned
with gables, the weatherings of which may be seen outside. In St. Thomas’
chapel is a charming example of a simple thirteenth-century reredos.
[Illustration: PRESBYTERY.]
The addition of these outer aisles makes Chichester unique among the
English cathedrals, though it may be paralleled in Elgin cathedral and
many a parish church. Artistically, the contrast of the gloomy and heavy
Norman nave with the lightness and brightness of the chapels behind is
most delightful; the nave looks infinitely larger and more spacious than
it is; it is never all seen at a glance like the empty nave of York, and
is full of changing vistas and delightful perspectives. Accidentally, the
thirteenth-century builders had hit on a new source of picturesqueness.
V. LATE GEOMETRICAL.—Between 1288 and 1304 the Lady chapel was lengthened
by two bays, and the end bay of the former chapel was re-vaulted. So that
what we see is a Norman chapel transmogrified into a Transitional one,
and that once more altered and extended. The new work was done just when
people had tired of conventional foliage, and hurried into naturalism.
The capitals are another object-lesson in Gothic foliation. The
window-tracery, with long-lobed trefoils, occurs also in the beautiful
chapel of the mediæval hospital, which should by all means be visited.
It may be asked, where did the Chichester people get the money for all
these great works? It was from pilgrims. They had had the great luck to
get a saint of their own, Bishop Richard. He was consecrated in 1245,
died in 1253, was canonised in 1261.
VI. CURVILINEAR (1315-1360).—Next the Canons set themselves to work to
improve the lighting of the cathedral, which was bad; all the windows,
except those in the new chapels, being small single lights. A fine window
of flowing tracery was inserted in the eastern chapel of the south choir
aisle (now filled with admirable glass by Mr. Kempe). And the south wall
of the transept was taken down altogether and rebuilt. Here is another
fine circular window. Bishop Langton, who gave the money for this work,
is buried below. The drainage, too, of the roofs was improved; gutters
and parapets being substituted for dripping eaves. To this period,
also, belong the stalls with ogee arches and compound cusping, and good
misereres.
VII. In the PERPENDICULAR period (1360-1485) the improvements in
lighting were continued, the north wall of the transept being treated
in similar fashion to that opposite. But settlements were the result,
and a flying-buttress had to be added to steady the north wall. And
at length the tower was crowned with a beautiful spire, not quite so
slender and graceful as those of Salisbury and Louth; more on the lines
of the Lichfield spires. An upper story and buttresses were added to the
sacristy, and the Canons’ Gateway was built.
VIII. In the TUDOR period an irregular three-sided cloister was built in
a quite abnormal position encircling the south transept. The object of
it was to provide a covered way to the cathedral for the Canons, as well
as for the Vicars, whose Close is hard by. The central tower seems to
have shown signs of weakness under the weight of the new spire; and so
a detached Campanile was built, as at Salisbury. Bishop Sherborne built
a grand stone screen (1508-1536) occupying the whole of the crossing,
and containing chantries; much of it exists, in fragments, under the
Campanile. To the time of Henry VII. belongs the Poultry Cross.
IX. In 1859 the central tower was found to be in danger, owing, it is
said, to the removal of the Arundel screen. Underpinning was resorted to,
but matters got worse. “At noon, on February 21st, 1861, the workmen were
ordered out of the building, and the people living in the neighbouring
houses were warned of their danger; about an hour and a half later the
spire was seen to incline slightly to the south-west and then to sink
perpendicularly through the roof. Thus was fulfilled literally the old
Sussex saying:
“If Chichester Church Steeple fall,
In England there’s no king at all.”
In 1866 the tower and spire were rebuilt; the tower raised slightly so
that the belfry windows might clear the roofs.
The Cathedral Church of St. Cuthbert and St. Mary, Durham.
[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]
The bishopric of Durham has a long history, though the cathedral was not
at Durham till 1018. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, north
of the Thames, had been brought about by the missionaries of the Irish
and Scottish church. Augustine’s mission in Kent, and that of Paulinus
in the north—both sent from Rome—had for their object, not so much the
conversion of England, as to induce the English Christians to transfer
their allegiance from the Celtic to the Roman Church. The success of
Augustine’s mission had been but short-lived. He landed in England A.D.
597; his death occurred in 605; and in 616 the Kentish kingdom relapsed
into paganism. Paulinus landed in 601; proceeded to Northumbria in 625,
but left it in 633, when, like Kent, most of Northumbria relapsed into
paganism. The real “apostle of the north” was not Paulinus, but Aidan,
who was sent at the request of King Oswald from Iona, and in the year 635
became the first bishop of the north of England.
(1) For thirty years the see was at Lindisfarne (Holy Island), but
the jurisdiction of the bishop extended over all England north of the
Humber, and over the south of Scotland (635-665). (2) In 678, Archbishop
Theodore of Canterbury split up the vast Northumbrian diocese into the
four bishoprics of York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and Whitherne in Galloway.
Twelve bishops ruled the now curtailed see from 678 to 900, the cathedral
still remaining at Lindisfarne. The second of these was the famous St.
Cuthbert (685-688). (3) In fear of the Danes, the body of St. Cuthbert
was removed to Chester-le-Street, seven miles north of Durham, and eight
bishops had their cathedral at Chester-le-Street (900-995). (4) Once
more, in fear of the Northmen, the see was removed—this for the last
time—to Durham. Including Aldhun, the last bishop of Chester-le-Street
and the first bishop of Durham, there have been, up to 1898, sixty-one
bishops of Durham.
In the earliest days, we always read of monks as carrying about the
relics of St. Cuthbert and serving the cathedral. Later on, but still in
Anglo-Saxon days, the monks gave way to Secular Canons. These in turn
were replaced by Benedictine monks by the Norman bishop, William of St.
Carilef (1081-1096). In 1540 the monastic establishment was suppressed,
and the cathedral was placed on the New Foundation, like the Benedictine
cathedrals of Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, and
Worcester, with an establishment once more of Secular Canons.
[Illustration: NAVE.]
In Anglo-Saxon days England was divided into provinces, whose earls
exercised quite as much power as the Viceroy of the Empress exercises
nowadays in India. These powerful and dangerous viceroyalties the Norman
sovereigns abolished, with two exceptions. To guard the Marches against
the Welsh, they left the old Earldom or Viceroyalty of Chester, putting
it in the hands of a layman. To guard the Scottish border, they united
with the Bishopric of Durham the Earldom of Northumberland. Between
Tees and Tyne, and in some external districts, the Bishop of Durham had
palatine jurisdiction. Here the King’s writ did not run; but the writs
were drawn in the name of the bishop. As feudal lord, his seat was Durham
Castle; as bishop, Durham Cathedral. Hence that wonderful group, castle
and cathedral, which one sees from the Wear bridge towering overhead;
unique in England, but not rare in the cities of the Prince-Bishops of
the Holy Roman Empire: Lausanne, Chur, or Sitten. With the Bishop of
Durham rested the power of life and death in case of murder, or even of
treason itself. The most magnificent of all these powerful prelates was
Anthony Bek (1283-1310). His own personal followers, when he marched
with Edward I. against the Scots, included 26 standard-bearers, 140
knights, 1000 foot, and 500 horse. “Surrounded by his officers of state,
or marching at the head of his troops, in peace or in war, he appeared
as the military chief of a powerful and independent franchise. The court
of Durham exhibited all the appendages of royalty; nobles addressed
the palatine sovereign kneeling; and instead of menial servants,
knights waited in his presence-chamber and at his table, bareheaded and
standing.” But in 1536, Henry VIII. swept away the most important of the
powers of the Counts Palatine. The ancient form of indictment “contra
pacem Episcopi” was altered to “against the King’s peace,” and the King’s
writ ran in Durham see. Still, the palatinate county of Durham was not
fully an integral part of the realm, and up to 1675 did not send members
to Parliament. It was not till 1836 that the privileges of the County
Palatine were fully and finally vested in the Crown. Even now, the towers
of Durham have a stern military air, such as no other English cathedral
possesses; for a parallel to which we must go to the fortress-cathedrals
of Albi and the south-west of France. Durham cathedral is “half House of
God, half castle ’gainst the Scot.”
Of the Anglo-Saxon cathedrals in wood or stone nothing remains. The
architectural history of the present cathedral commences with the
accession of the second Norman prelate, William of St. Carilef, or St.
Calais on the southern border of Maine, who was bishop from 1081 to 1095,
and is said to have laid the foundations of the Norman cathedral in 1093
on August 11th. The building operations of the Norman cathedral admit
of a threefold division: (1) The choir and choir aisles; the arcade and
triforium of the eastern aisles of both transepts; the crossing; the
first bay of the nave and the first arch of the nave-triforium; and the
whole of the outer walls of the nave up to the top of the aisle-arcade of
intersecting arches. All this is supposed to have been built by William
of St. Carilef between August 11th, 1093, and January 6th, 1096; _i.e._,
in two and a half years; which seems impossible. (2) In the interval
of three years between Carilef’s death and the appointment of Ralph
Flambard, the monks are said to have finished the transepts. (3) Between
1099 and his death in 1128, Ralph Flambard finished the nave. These three
divisions are architecturally correct; they are borne out by differences
of detail; and they follow the same order of building which was observed
elsewhere. But it does not follow that the exact dates given above, on
mediæval authority, are correct.
The most important matter is the date of the high vaults. From
architectural evidence it is pretty clear that the vaulting was executed
in the following order: (1) the vaults of the aisles of the choir and
transepts, said to be not later than 1099; (2) the high vault of the
choir, now destroyed, said to be not later than 1104; (3) the vaults of
the aisles of the nave, said to be not later than 1128; (4) the high
vaults of the transepts and nave, said to be not later than 1133. The
chronology of the high vaults is a very important question in the history
of mediæval architecture, especially as affecting the reputation of
English architects. If the above dates are correct, it was the Durham
architect, and not a Frenchman, who was the first to solve the great
problem of mediæval architecture: how to construct and keep up a ribbed
vault, oblong in plan, over a central aisle. With it goes the question
of priority in the use of flying-buttresses to take the thrust of a high
vault. If the dates given above are correct, Durham was a generation
ahead of the whole world in the construction of a high vault and in the
use of flying-buttresses.
[Illustration: WEST TOWERS.]
But the transverse arches of the vault of the nave are pointed; a feature
which occurs nowhere else in England at so early a date. Besides, it
seems impossible that if the Durham people had solved the problem of
problems of mediæval architecture—the construction of a high oblong
vault—nobody else should have copied it in England for more than fifty
years.
Another theory is that the high vaults were constructed by Bishop
Farnham in 1242, making them contemporary with the Chapel of the Nine
Altars—which is impossible. It seems to me that they belong to the
episcopate of Hugh Pudsey, _c._ 1160.
The bays of Durham are coupled, Lombard-fashion—_i.e._, large and small
piers alternate: with what object, is uncertain. There were three
parallel eastern apses. The central apse had no ambulatory. The lateral
apses were square externally, as at Romsey and Cerisy-la-Forêt, and S.
Maria in Cosmedin, Rome (_c._ 780). The central was separated from the
lateral apses by solid walls, as at Cerisy-la-Forêt, whose clerestory
also seems to have been copied in the original western clerestory of the
south transept.
Durham anticipates Gothic not only in vaulting its central aisles
in oblongs—for the high oblong vaults of Durham, if not so early
as 1133, are still the earliest in England—but in the employment
of flying-buttresses. These, I think, were built long before the
vaults, their object originally not being to withstand the thrust
of vaults. In the triforium of the choir they appear in the form of
semicircular arches, with a wall on them, which provided a support
for the longitudinal timbers of the aisle-roof. In the choir these
flying-buttresses are semicircular arches, and therefore, strictly
speaking, are not flying-buttresses at all. But in the triforium of the
nave they consist of segments of circles tilted up on end. Here they
are genuine flying-buttresses, which oppose resistance to any outward
inclination of the clerestory wall. The only constructional difference
between those of the nave and Gothic flying-buttresses is that the former
are placed underneath the roof of the triforium, sheltered from the
weather, while the latter are placed outside and above the aisle-roof,
and are thus liable to disintegration by wind, rain and frost. But
even in Gothic, flying-buttresses are not always displayed; they still
remained concealed under the triforium in the early work at Salisbury;
and even in the fourteenth-century work of Winchester nave.
At the west end the towers project beyond the line of the nave, but only
slightly. Still we may well see in this the germ of the grand western
transepts of Ely, Wells and Peterborough.
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
Internally, the one fault of Durham is its shortness in proportion to its
great breadth. The nave ought to be two or three bays longer. Ely nave
has twelve bays, Peterborough ten, Norwich fourteen, Durham only eight.
But the architect could not build much further to the west, for close at
hand is the precipice rising above the river; nor did he like to build
further to the east, for the ground there is bad.
The internal elevation, however, is unsurpassed by that of any Romanesque
church in Europe. At Winchester, Norwich, Peterborough, Ely, Malvern,
Leominster, Chepstow, the three stories—pier-arcade, triforium, and
clerestory—are about equal in height: a very unsatisfactory proportion.
The architects of Gloucester and Tewkesbury saw this: unfortunately
they rushed into the opposite extreme, and carried up their piers to
such a vast height that the triforium and clerestory were dwarfed out
of all proportion. But at Durham the proportions are absolutely right.
The vault, too, is not so much later in date as to interrupt the solid
monumental effect of the interior. It is as much preferable to the florid
vaults of Gloucester, Tewkesbury, and Oxford as it is to the unworthy
wooden ceilings of Peterborough, Selby, Waltham, and Ely. Durham gives
one still the impression which it gave Dr. Johnson—one of “rocky solidity
and indeterminate duration”: the very reverse of the unsubstantial
tenuity of Salisbury and Beauvais.
The doorway of the Chapter-house is recorded to have been built by Bishop
Galfrid Rufus (1133-1140). The north and south doorways of the nave
(facing one another) are so similar to that of the Chapter-house that
they must also be his work.
To Bishop Pudsey, to whom we have attributed the high vaults, belongs
also the Galilee, _c._ 1175. He commenced to erect a Lady chapel in
the usual position to the east of the choir. But St. Cuthbert, who had
an ultra-monastic hatred of womankind, and would not brook to have the
chapel even of Our Lady in the neighbourhood of his shrine, showed his
displeasure openly by the fissures and cracks and settlements which
kept constantly occurring. In despair the bishop had to build in the
cramped space between the west end and the precipice, thus blocking up
the west end of the church. From the first this Lady chapel seems to
have been called the Galilee; nobody knows why. In details it is not
unlike the chapel in the keep of Newcastle. Built in the last years of
the TRANSITIONAL period (1145-1190), it is remarkable for the paucity of
Gothic detail: the arches are all semicircular; they are not moulded, but
ornamented with bands of the old-fashioned zigzag. The bases, indeed,
are Transitional in character; and so is the flat voluted leaf of the
capitals. But, spite of semicircular arch and Norman ornament, the spirit
of the whole—its lightness, grace, and elegance—is Gothic. A building
may have every arch pointed and moulded, and yet in its heaviness be
Romanesque at heart: _e.g._, the Cistercian churches of Fountains and
Kirkstall, the Augustinian church of Llanthony. In Durham Galilee, on
the other hand, one feels that one is in a Gothic building, as truly as
one does in presence of the semicircular arcades of Pisa or Lucca. Still
more Gothic must have been the effect of the coupled shafts of Purbeck
marble before Cardinal Langley added two more shafts of stone. The
cardinal is buried in front of the west door of the nave. Here also was
the shrine of the remains of the Venerable Bede, stolen from the monks
of Jarrow by the sacrist Elfred, one of the most successful of mediæval
“body-snatchers.” Pudsey’s work is to be seen also in the external part
of the Prior’s doorway opening from the cloister into the east end of the
south aisle of the nave.
[Illustration: FROM NORTH.]
To the LANCET period (1190-1245) belong the western towers, carried up
in the early years of the thirteenth century. At one time they had tall
wooden spires. The present battlements were added about 1780.
To the early part of the GEOMETRICAL period belongs the noble eastern
transept. Its position repeats that of Fountains Abbey, which was
finished in 1247, and which also is known as the “Chapel of the Nine
Altars.” The object of the eastern extension at Durham was partly to
provide nine more chapels, partly to provide a clear space all round
the shrine of St. Cuthbert, which, like those of St. Swithun and St.
Birinus at Winchester, and that of St. Alban at St. Albans, stood to
the east of the high altar, and contained the body of St. Cuthbert and
the head of St. Oswald. The idea of the eastern transept seems to come
from Hereford and Abbey Dore. It is curious that the floor of the Durham
transept is lower than that of the choir. It has been suggested that
the height of the vault being fixed by that of the vault of the choir,
sufficient height could be gained only by lowering the floor. But I doubt
if mediæval architects were in the habit of designing merely for effect
in this way: probably some humble practical reason is at the bottom of
it. The fact that the ground falls away to the east, or that it is bad
ground, and that much of it had to be excavated and carted away, would be
quite sufficient for this objectionable drop in level (cf. “Worcester”).
The vaulting is, perhaps unavoidably, awkward and clumsy.
The work was not commenced till 1242 (Bishop Farnham), and not completed
till about 1280. When it was begun, Lancet windows were still in fashion;
when it was completed, they had given way to traceried windows with
cusped circles in their heads. Later on, Perpendicular tracery was
inserted in the lancets: it is surprising that it has not been hacked
out, as in Ripon façade, by architectural “purists.” The circular window,
90 feet across, was rebuilt by Wyatt. The architect was a layman, Richard
Farnham, “architector novæ fabricæ Dunelm”; the master-mason “Thomas
Moises posuit hanc petram.” The foliated capitals, both here and in the
eastern bay of the choir, are of unrivalled beauty. No less remarkable
is the perfection of the masonry. The walls are nearly eight feet
thick, with huge piers at the angles forming buttresses and weighted
by pinnacles; they rise straight from the ground unaided by aisles or
flying-buttresses, “yet they have borne the lofty vault (80 feet high)
for more than three centuries without the slightest sign of settlement or
flaw.” Such was the reverence for St. Cuthbert that not a single person
was buried in the cathedral till 1311, when that magnificent prelate
Anthony Bek was brought into the Chapel of Nine Altars for interment,
through a door on the north of the chapel (now blocked up), not through
the cathedral; and even he was not allowed a monument. One sees why there
is such a paucity of monuments in this cathedral.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF NINE ALTARS.]
The next thing was to pull down the old Norman apse; to join the transept
on to the choir; and to break the transition from Romanesque choir to
Gothic transept by remodelling the eastern bays of the choir in the
fashion of the day. Also a new Gothic vault was put over the choir; its
eastern bay is sexpartite. Here also the details are of exceptional
beauty.
For a long time little was done at Durham; the cathedral was structurally
complete. In the CURVILINEAR PERIOD (1315-1360) several large windows
with flowing tracery were inserted: _e.g._, the west window of the nave
and the north window of the north transept; and four windows (restored)
in the south aisle of the choir. The three westernmost windows in the
north aisle of the choir were copied in 1848 from the fourteenth-century
windows at Sleaford, Holbeach and Boughton Aluph. To this period belongs
the tomb of Bishop Hatfield, built in his lifetime (1345-1381), one of
the best bits of design in England. The episcopal throne above it looks a
little later, and seems to have been designed for some other position, as
it does not fit the space between the piers.
In the PERPENDICULAR period the great work was the central tower, which
replaced a thirteenth-century tower, _c._ 1470. It is 218 feet high;
in spite of its vast weight, the Norman piers which support it show no
signs of strain. There are massive squinches at the angles, showing
that it was intended to be finished by a spire, as the western towers
actually were finished. What an astounding spectacle Durham would have
presented, capped with three spires! Imagine Lichfield cathedral set on a
hill 200 feet high! The Neville screen, built, like that at St. Albans,
of clunch, is rather thin and spiky. It is continued to right and left,
forming sedilia on _both_ sides of the sanctuary (1372-1380). In the
nave is a series of Neville monuments. In the third bay from the west is
the Women’s Boundary Cross. The great window of the south transept was
inserted about 1400.
Between 1660 and 1672 Bishop Cousin did much to repair the damage done by
the Scottish prisoners who had been confined in the cathedral after the
battle of Dunbar in 1650. His stalls and font cover are of exceptional
interest, as specimens of what is rare—seventeenth-century Gothic. It
should be compared with the woodwork of St. John’s Church, Leeds. The
bishop’s fine oak choir-screen has been destroyed, by way of restoration;
the new open screen, and the loss of the organ, give the “unbroken vista”
for which so many of our interiors have been ruined.
_Exterior._—On the north doorway of the nave is the famous sanctuary
knocker. Durham and Beverley, owing to the high reputation of the relics
of St. Cuthbert and St. John of Beverley, both had large privileges of
sanctuary. Beverley retains the Sanctuary chair, the Frithstool; Durham
the knocker. It is thirteenth-century work. “Upon knocking at the ring
affixed to the north door of Durham the culprit was admitted without
delay; and after full confession, reduced to writing before witnesses,
a bell in the Galilee tower ringing all the time to give notice to the
town that some one had taken refuge in the church, there was put on him
a black gown with a yellow cross on its right shoulder, as the badge of
St. Cuthbert, whose peace he had claimed. When thirty-seven days had
elapsed, if a pardon could not be obtained, the malefactor, after certain
ceremonies before the shrine, solemnly abjured his native land for ever;
and was straightway, by the agency of the intervening parish constables,
conveyed to the coast, bearing in his hand a white wooden cross, and
was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship which sailed after his
arrival.” During their stay in the church the culprits lived on the lower
floors of the western towers. The atrocious setting of the doorway is
modern; as also the pinnacles of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, where the
famous Dun Cow is to be seen in a niche in the north-west turret. All the
design of this side of the cathedral has been utterly ruined; having been
pared away to the depth of three or four inches. Originally each bay of
the aisle had a transverse roof ending in a gable, as originally on the
south side of Chichester nave.
The monastic buildings are numerous and important; the library contains
precious MSS., touching relics of St. Cuthbert, and a wonderful
collection of Pre-conquest crosses and “hogbacks.” For all these the
visitor should consult Canon Greenwell’s admirable handbook.
The Cathedral Church of St. Ethelreda, Ely.
[Illustration: ELY, SOUTH-WEST.]
“The vast and magnificent cathedral of Ely,” says Mrs. Van Rensselaer,
“looms up on the horizon, as we come westward from Norwich, like a
great solitary ship at sea. As we draw nearer it preserves its isolated
clearness of outline, lifted visibly above the plain, yet so little
lifted that its bulk seems all the greater from being nearer the eye.
As we enter the little town from the south-west we realise its enormous
length, the grace of its octagon, and the stern majesty of the tall
tower, which rises like a great cliff in a land where men might well
build cliffs, since Nature had built none. But there is in truth no spot
whence the great monarch of the fenlands may not be admirably seen, until
we get so far off that it drops behind the horizon’s rim. Wherever it may
reveal itself it is always immense, imposing, majestic: only upon the
plains of Egypt or Mesopotamia has Nature assisted the effect of man’s
work by such entire suppression of herself.”
Ely, like Peterborough, Ramsey, Thorney, and Crowland, and like
Glastonbury, the greatest of all the English monasteries, goes back
to early Anglo-Saxon days, when communities of monks and nuns sought
solitude and safety in the recesses of far-spreading marshes and fens.
In the beginning the monastery was founded as a nunnery, in 673, by
Ethelreda, who became the first abbess and Ely’s patron saint. From the
nuns it passed to secular canons, and in Dunstan’s time to Benedictine
monks. In 1109 the abbot gave way to a bishop, and the Benedictine church
became a Benedictine cathedral.
The Bishop of Ely in his island, like the Bishop of Durham in his
hill-fortress, possessed powers which no other English ecclesiastic was
allowed to share. His territorial possessions included the whole Isle
of Ely: and this, “the Liberty of the Bishops of Ely,” was subject to
the exclusive jurisdiction of the bishop. It is in these two facts—the
possession of a local saint, St. Ethelreda or St. Audrey, of high repute
through all England; and in the enormous revenues derived from the
Isle of Ely—that the explanation lies of the vast scale on which the
abbey-church was planned in the eleventh century, of the unparalleled
richness of its thirteenth-century presbytery, and of the enormous works
undertaken and rapidly carried out in the fourteenth century.
[Illustration: CHOIR]
I. NORMAN.—The present cathedral was commenced in 1083 by Abbot Simeon,
brother of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester, where Simeon himself had been
a monk. Earlier still he had been a monk at St. Ouen, Rouen; so that he
would be well acquainted with the contemporary architecture of Normandy.
As was to be expected from the relationship of the founders of the two
cathedrals, Ely and Winchester have many points of resemblance. Both
are vast in scale, far surpassing the Abbaye-aux-hommes at Caen, or
Lanfranc’s copy of it at Canterbury. Both indulge in the luxury of aisles
to the west as well as to the east of their transepts. Both had return
aisles in the transepts—a feature borrowed from the Abbaye-aux-hommes.
Those of Winchester remain; those of Ely have been pushed back to the
walls. The nave of Ely had no less than thirteen bays, its transepts
three, its choir five. The choir-aisles had square ends; the choir ended
in a semicircular apse. The stalls were placed in the crossing and in
the two eastern bays of the nave up to 1770, when Essex removed them to
the presbytery; Scott placed them in their present position in 1847.
There was a central tower; and, instead of two western towers, there
was one tower with four flanking turrets. From the lower stories of
these turrets, of which only the southern one is left, apses projected
eastward. Externally the western transept gave the church great breadth
and dignity; and the plan of Bury and Ely was speedily copied at
Peterborough, Lincoln, and Wells. Internally it is the most picturesque
bit of Norman work in the country. The two towers “riding tandem” may be
paralleled at Wymondham and Wimborne, and formerly at Bury and Hereford.
Of Abbot Simeon’s eleventh-century work little is left now except the
vaulting-shafts in front of his apse, to the east of the organ; the
exterior of the west windows of the south transept, which alone have
the nail-head moulding; and the lower part of the eastern walls of the
transepts, which have the Ionic capital. “The masonry is rude and tooled
with a large cross-stroke: the abaci and the soffits of the arches are
square and unmoulded.” The choir and the lower part of the transepts are
said to have been completed in 1106.
[Illustration: EAST END.]
All the rest of the work as far as the west end was designed towards the
end of the Norman period: _c._ 1130. The lateness of the work is seen
in the tall, slender, graceful shafts of the triforium and clerestory,
and in the substitution of mouldings for carved ornament in the orders
of all the arches. It is much nearer Gothic than the contemporary work
at Peterborough and Norwich. The proportions are unusually good, both
the pier-arches and clerestory being taller than usual in proportion to
such a lofty triforium. Accordingly, the proportions of the Norman choir,
then standing, were copied in the presbytery added to the choir in the
thirteenth century; and the proportions of the presbytery were reproduced
in the fourteenth-century choir. It is this, doubtless, which gives such
a feeling of unity in Ely, as at Worcester, in spite of the fact that
the present cathedral consists of three blocks built in three different
centuries in entirely different styles. At Canterbury, Rochester, Ripon,
Chester, nave and choir quarrel; at Winchester and York, nave and
transept; Ely has evolved harmony out of discord. The work seems to have
been done in four sections: first, the completion of the transepts and
the crossing and the eastern bays of the nave; second, the western bays;
third, the three lower stories of the west transept; fourth, the monks’
and prior’s doorways.
II. TRANSITIONAL.—The upper stories of the western transept, the western
turrets, and the upper arches of the crossing, were not completed
till about 1170. About the same date are the Infirmary chapel and the
Refectory; the former east, the latter south of the cloisters.
III. LANCET (1190-1245).—Early in the thirteenth century the Galilee
porch was added, in the same position as at Durham. Externally the design
is commonplace; internally, “with its rich outer and inner portals, its
capitals carved with delicate curling leafage, its side arcades in double
rows of trefoiled arches, and the profuse dog-tooth enrichment of its
mouldings, it is one of the loveliest things ever built, and one of the
most English in its loveliness.” The early date of 1200 is assigned to
this and to the equally beautiful western porches of St. Alban’s. If so,
Gothic must have advanced with lightning speed from the jejune work of
Lincoln choir and Winchester retro-choir.
Next, about 1234, the Norman apse was pulled down—partly, perhaps,
because it had become unsafe, its foundations not having been carried
down to the solid rock, but, much more from the need to provide more
accommodation for the crowds of pilgrims to St. Audrey’s shrine. The apse
was replaced by a presbytery of six bays: a presbytery of inexpressible
loveliness. “Nowhere,” says Mr. Freeman, “can we better study the boldly
clustered marble pier with its detached shafts, the richly floriated
capitals, the yet richer corbels which bear up the marble vaulting
shafts, the bold and deftly cut mouldings of every arch, great and
small. Lovelier detail was surely never wrought by the hand of man.” The
piers are closely spaced; and the arches, therefore, as at Beverley, are
sharply pointed—in beautiful harmony with the Lancet windows. On the
other hand, the trefoiling of the triforium arches contrasts delightfully
with the pointed arches of pier-arcade and clerestory. Only at Beverley
can the beauty of Ely presbytery be paralleled; but at Beverley the
design owes everything to the architect; at Ely the sculptor may claim
half the credit. Worcester choir may be placed next in order; its
proportions, indeed, are very similar to those of the Ely work. The
presbytery was completed in thirteen years, and cost what is equivalent
to £120,000 of our money—£20,000 per bay.
[Illustration: OCTAGON AND CHOIR.]
IV. GEOMETRICAL.—With this superb eastern extension the monks remained
satisfied for some seventy years. Nothing was done in the cathedral
except the insertion of large Geometrical windows to give more light to
the chapels in the eastern aisle of the south transept.
V. CURVILINEAR (1315-1360).—But in the fourteenth century a most
wonderful series of great works was carried out in Ely; the noblest works
of that or perhaps of any period of mediæval building in England. First
of all, it was resolved to give the Blessed Virgin the honour so long
withheld from her at Ely. At Ely her rightful position in the presbytery
had been usurped by St. Ethelreda, as at Durham by St. Cuthbert.
Following the precedent of Bristol and Peterborough, a vast Lady chapel
was now built for her on the north side of the choir between 1321 and
1349. Later on, Ely Lady chapel in turn gave birth to King’s College
chapel at Cambridge. It is a wonderful piece of mediæval engineering;
the vault—a very flat one—being upheld by the mathematical minimum of
wall and buttress. But it was more than engineering. It was the product
of a time when “Catholic purity in the best natures was still allied to
the tenderness of chivalry”—
“When in reverence of the Heavene’s Queene
They came to worship alle women that beene.”
It is said that when Pugin saw the ruins of its arcade, once so glorious
in its beauty—wherein are carved, in the spandrils above each canopy,
incidents in the scriptural and legendary history of the Blessed
Virgin—he burst into tears. He estimated the cost of the restoration of
the Lady chapel at £100,000, but said that no workmen could be found
competent to do the work.
The year after the Lady chapel was commenced, the central tower fell; and
falling eastward, ruined the three western bays of the Norman choir which
still remained. Nevertheless, though the monks had suddenly cast on them
the vast task of rebuilding both tower and choir, they did not abandon or
intermit their work in the Lady chapel. Side by side the different sets
of works went on: the Lady chapel, the central tower, and the choir. The
tower was finished in 1342, the Lady chapel _c._ 1349, the choir probably
not much later. How vast the resources of Ely must have been!
In 1322 Alan of Walsingham, then sacrist at Ely and afterwards Prior,
set to work to clear away the _débris_ of the piers of the tower. We
may believe that when he saw the great open space in the centre of the
cathedral, it may well have occurred to him what a pity it would be ever
to close it up again to construct the usual circumscribed square central
tower, the width only of the nave, under which one feels as if looking
up from the bottom of a well. What was left, when he had cleared away
the four tower-piers, was an area three times as large as that of the
original crossing. This area was an octagon, with four long and four
short sides: four long sides opening into nave, choir, and transepts;
four short sides opening diagonally into the aisles. Why not throw
four wide and four narrow arches over the piers of the octagon, and
on these arches erect, not a small square tower, but a vast octagonal
tower? Octagonal central towers were unknown in the English cathedrals;
but there are plenty abroad—_e.g._, magnificent examples at Coutances
and Siena. The difficulty was how to roof a tower so vast. The noblest
course would have been to cover it with a vault of stone. But no English
architect ever dared a vault 77 ft. wide. In Spain they might have done
it: the vault of the nave of Gerona is 73 ft. in span. In England not so;
the York people did not even venture to vault a nave 45 ft. broad.
[Illustration: LADY CHAPEL.]
Some sort of wooden roof, therefore, had to be adopted. That roof could
not be a flat wooden ceiling; no beams of the length of 77 ft. could be
had; and if put up they would have been unsafe. Instead, then, of a flat
ceiling, Alan determined on a conical vault of wood like that of York
Chapter-house. But what he wanted was not merely a roof, but a lantern.
A roof like the York one would have darkened the whole central area,
besides being ugly in appearance and difficult to construct. Instead,
therefore, of taking the whole of the York cone, he cut the top off,
replacing its sharp spike with an octagonal lantern. In this, or in some
such way, Alan got at his design: one of the most original and poetic
conceptions of the middle ages; but arising, like all the best things
in Gothic architecture, out of nothing but the exigencies of building
construction.
The problem was solved on paper, but it proved immensely difficult in
execution. Alan finished the stone piers and arches in six years, but
the timber-work occupied twelve years more. He had to search all over
England before he could find oaks big and straight and sound enough for
the eight vertical angle-posts of his lantern. They are 63 feet long,
with a sapless scantling of 3 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 8 in. Oaks like those do
not grow now in England. The eight angle-posts are tied together at top
and bottom by collars of horizontal beams, and the whole skeleton lantern
rests on the tips of inclined beams, whose lower ends rest on corbels
behind the capitals of the great piers below.
And as the inclined beams spread to right and left from the great piers
below, it follows that the eight sides of the lantern are not placed
above the eight arches below. This engineering necessity, also, is
wrought into a new source of beauty. For advantage is taken of it to
pierce the wall-space above the narrow low arches with four tall windows,
so that the central area, so gloomy at Winchester, Lincoln, and Wells,
is irradiated with a flood of light from twelve vast windows; four
below, eight above. There is not such a lantern church in the world, and
certainly there is no such interior as Ely in England. To the west, dark
nave; to the east, darker choir; the centre all light and atmosphere. The
views from the aisles across the octagon into the choir are veritable
glimpses into fairyland. Externally, too, the octagonal lantern groups
marvellously with the great western tower; in height, in bulk, in shape
they are in perfect ratio.
Side by side with the octagon went up the choir, as was necessary, that
the octagon might have abutment to the east. The choir is “a little
over-developed and attenuated in detail”; the windows are squat and
ungraceful in proportion, and their flowing tracery wiry and unlovely.
Window tracery is the one weak point in the Curvilinear work at Ely.
Nevertheless, this choir is one of those works whose delicate loveliness
disarms criticism. It even disarmed Mr. Fergusson, who says that the
proportions of the presbytery are reproduced in the choir, “with such
exquisite taste that there is perhaps no single portion of any Gothic
building in the world which can vie with it in poetry of design or beauty
of detail.”
[Illustration: ALCOCK’S CHAPEL.]
But the monks had not finished even now. They were dissatisfied with
the lighting of the older part of the cathedral. So they took out the
thirteenth-century lancets, not only those of the aisles but those of
the outer wall of the triforium of the presbytery, and replaced them by
broad windows of flowing tracery. Even this was insufficient, and so they
substituted a flat roof for the steep sloping roof of the two western
bays of the presbytery aisles, and glazed the openings of these two
bays of the triforium. Thus more light was obtained for St. Ethelreda’s
shrine, which then stood between these two bays; its exact position is
marked by the elaborate boss in the vault of the choir. Externally, the
result is hideous, a big hole being left in the choir aisles, where the
lean-to roof formerly extended continuously. All this piercing of the
walls with bigger windows weakened the supports of the vaults, and the
builders therefore took the precaution to weight the buttresses with
heavy pinnacles, and to add flying-buttresses.
Beautiful stalls were then put up under the octagon—the panels are
modern—and above the ancient white marble tomb of St. Ethelreda a stone
canopy and watching-loft were erected. It now stands between the south
piers of the presbytery, in the fourth bay from the west. On this was
placed the Norman silver reliquary, “embossed with many figures, with a
golden majesty blazing in its centre, with countless jewels of crystal
and pearl, onyx and beryl, and amethyst and chalcedony.”
Nor was this all. Alan designed for his friend Prior Crauden a little
chapel which would be the cynosure of any other cathedral, but which
passes almost unnoticed amid the glories of Ely.
VI. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—In this period the monks continued their
improvements in the lighting of the cathedral, treating the Norman nave
very much as they had treated the Lancet choir—_i.e._, putting bigger
windows in the aisles, and also raising the aisle-walls so as to get
space for an upper range of windows, in the hope that some light might
filter through across the triforium into the nave.
Moreover, they added another storey to the great west tower, making it
octagonal, in order to bring it more into harmony with Alan’s lantern.
The additional storey threw more weight on the Norman arches below, under
which new strengthening arches had to be built. This saved the tower; but
the northern half of the western transept collapsed, and has never been
rebuilt.
The great east and west windows of the new Lady chapel also soon showed
signs of weakness, and Perpendicular was substituted for flowing tracery.
To this period also belong the hammer-beam roofs of the transepts, the
cloisters, and the Ely Porta or Walpole Gate.
VII. TUDOR.—In 1488 was erected the chantry of Bishop Alcock at the east
end of the north aisle of the choir; and in 1534 that of Bishop West in a
similar position in the south aisle. They are perhaps the two most superb
chantries in England, of marvellous richness and delicacy and vigour.
That of Bishop West is of exceptional interest for its Renaissance
vaulting and scroll-work. One so rarely sees in an English cathedral the
delicate art of the early Italian Renaissance.
VIII. In 1539 the monks were expelled; secular canons took their place.
In 1699 Sir Christopher Wren contributed a classical doorway to the north
transept. The roofs of the nave and the lantern were painted _c._ 1862
by Mr. Le Strange and Mr. Gambier Parry. To Sir Gilbert Scott is due the
gorgeous reredos.
The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Exeter.
[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]
In the days of the so-called Heptarchy, the divisions of the Church
followed those of the State. The diocese of Lichfield was conterminous
with the kingdom of Mercia. In the same way the diocese of Winchester was
coextensive with the kingdom of Wessex. Thus Devonshire, so far as it had
been colonised by Anglo-Saxons before the eighth century, formed part of
the diocese of Winchester. But these vast dioceses were too cumbrous to
work. They had to be subdivided. So a western diocese was lopped off from
Winchester, and a Bishop of Sherborne was appointed as its head. Then, as
the far west grew in population and importance, two more bishoprics were
created—those of Crediton and Cornwall. These two, however, were soon
amalgamated; and Cornwall has had no bishop of its own from the Conquest
till the recent formation of the Bishopric of Truro.
Just before the Norman Conquest Bishop Leofric removed the see from
the open town of Crediton to the walled city of Exeter, largely in
consequence of attacks of Scandinavian pirates. At Exeter Leofric
found a Benedictine monastery, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Peter.
This conventual church he made his cathedral. “He was installed in the
episcopal chair by Edward the Confessor, who supported his right arm, and
Queen Eadgytha his left”; representations of which were inserted in the
fourteenth-century sedilia. The Benedictine monks were removed by the
Confessor to his new abbey at Westminster, and Leofric supplied their
place by a body of secular canons, who lived together, however, and to
some extent observed monastic discipline. Leofric was left undisturbed in
his bishopric till his death, 1072. His successor, also, though a Norman,
was English and conservative by training; the venerable Anglo-Saxon
church was good enough for him. But William Warelwast (1107-1128) was
a great building prelate, and it was he who commenced the existing
cathedral. Exeter Cathedral, therefore, was commenced much later than
most of the Norman cathedrals. This Norman cathedral of Warelwast seems
to have been partly remodelled in the early years of the Lancet period
(1194-1206) by Bishop Marshall. Later, but still in the Lancet period,
Bishop Bruere (1224-1244) settled the cathedral establishment, and
provided for his dignitaries a chapter-house, as well as stalls in the
cathedral. In the Geometrical period Bishop Bronescombe (1257-1280)
seems to have made a few changes at the east end of the choir. Then
came the great builder of all, Bishop Quivil, who formed the bold idea
of remodelling the whole cathedral, as left by Bishop Marshall. The
work which Bishop Quivil commenced was carried out, and precisely in
accordance with the original plans, by Bishops Bitton, Stapledon, and
Grandisson, who completed the transformation of the cathedral about
1350. Other great prelates did good work later—especially Brantyngham,
Stafford, Lacy, Bothe, Courtenay, Fox, King, and Oldham. The Bishops of
Exeter were in nearly all cases men of the highest ability, rank, and
importance.
Up to 1551 Exeter was one of the greatest prizes in the Church of
England. It possessed thirty-two manors, fourteen palaces—two in
Cornwall, nine in Devonshire, one in Surrey, one in London, of which
Essex Street, Strand, is a reminder. The present value of the income
of the see would be at least £100,000. The first of the Protestant
bishops was Miles Coverdale, who with Tyndale translated the Bible.
Seth Ward (1662-1667) “cast out the buyers and sellers who had usurped
the cathedral, and therein kept distinct shops to vend their wares.”
In the evil days of the Puritans the cathedral had been divided into
two churches by a vast whitewashed wall, built on the choir-screen and
separating choir from nave. The Independents worshipped in the nave,
the Presbyterians in the choir. Here they had what they called “great
quiet and comfort,” till Seth Ward pulled the wall down. Seth Ward’s
restoration of the cathedral cost him £25,000—representing a far greater
sum nowadays. He put the cathedral in substantial repair; and the
restoration by Sir G. G. Scott, in 1870, did little damage.